The Emperor’s fundamental mistakes, as disclosed by his speeches, appear to an Englishman to have been in assuming when they were made that the Empire was in a less advanced stage of consolidation and settlement than it in fact was, and in underrating the intelligence, knowledge, and patriotism of his people.  From this point of view his early speeches in particular sound jejune or superfluous.  What would the Englishman say to a king who began his reign by a series of homilies on Alfred the Great or Elizabeth or Queen Victoria; by using strong language about the Labour party or the Fabian Society; by appeals to throne and altar; by describing to Parliament the chief duties of the monarch; by recommending the London County Council to build plenty of churches; by calling journalists “hunger-candidates”; by frequent references to the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar?  Yet, mutatis mutandis, this is not so very unlike what the young Emperor did, and not for a year or two, but for several years after his accession.  To an Englishman such addresses would appear rather ill-timed academic declamation.

Yet there was much, and perhaps is still much, to account for, if not quite justify, the Emperor’s rhetoric.  The peculiarity of Germany’s monarchic system placed, and places, the monarch in a patriarchal position not very different from that of Moses towards the Israelites—­a leader, preacher, and prophet.  Again, the Empire, when the Emperor came to the throne, was not a homogeneous nation inspired by a centuries-old national spirit, but suffered, as it still in a measure suffers, from the particularism of the various kingdoms and States composing it:  in other words, from too local a patriotism and stagnation of the imperial idea.  Thirdly, the Empire had no navy, while an Empire to-day without a navy is at a tremendous and dangerous disadvantage in world-politics, and the mere conception that a navy was indispensable had to be created in a country lying in the heart of Europe and with only one short coast-line.

The Englishman is as loyal to his King as the German is to his Emperor, and England, as little as Germany, is disposed to change from monarchy to republicanism.  But the Englishman’s political and social governor, guide, and executive is not the King, but the Parliament; because while in the King he has a worthy representative of the nation’s historical development and dignity, in the Parliament he sees a powerful and immediate reflection of himself, his own wishes, and his own judgments.  Moreover, with the spread of democratic ideas, the position of a monarch anywhere in the civilized world to-day is not what it was fifty years ago.  The general progress in education since then; the drawing together of the nations by common commercial and financial interests; the incessant activity of writers and publishers; the circulation and power of the Press—­themselves almost threatening to become a despotism—­such facts as these tend to change the relations between kings and peoples.  Monarchs and men are changing places; the ruler becomes the subject, the subject ruler; it is the people who govern, and the monarch obeys the people’s will.